


Brief Lives

by Wecanhaveallthree



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 09:35:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21251243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wecanhaveallthree/pseuds/Wecanhaveallthree
Summary: On the frontier of newly-taken territory in the Nem'yar Atoll, a T'au Pathfinder struggles with duty, sacrifice, and the insidious dangers of Chaos.





	Brief Lives

**I - UNBOUND**

It was all falling apart.

The cottage kitchen was cramped, allowing only a single human to move with any freedom between hardtop bench and the mouldering cupboards. Greasy light flickered from the candles set about, their harsh scent cloying in the closeness, barely illuminating the frosted windowpanes - or the alien seeking a moment of privacy.

Short and slender as all T’au, she was bulked out by ochre recon armour, the hue dulled with camouflage tint. Her helmet sat on the counter, the faint chime of an alert signal calling for her attention and response. She did not move to answer.

The bond was broken.

And for what? A filthy people, clinging to the muck of their ignorant existence, venerating make-believe idols over the beneficence of the Greater Good. The gue’la squatted in their hovels and begged aid they had no right to, while their counterparts - who looked the same, it was impossible to tell the wretches apart - would ambush and torture and kill their would-be saviours.

She had only been conveyed the casualty report at local dusk when the Pathfinder team was billeting in the hamlet. Too exhausted by the patrol, too numbed by duty, she had ensured her detail were secure before finding a space to herself - and to let the grief come.

It was not done for a Shas’Ul to display any emotion beyond determination and stoic resolve in public. It would be detrimental to morale. She had told herself that, step by step, gritting her teeth, as she found an abandoned gue’la dwelling to ‘secure’. And by the time it was safe, by the time she could reach for them, the tears would not come. She could not even cry for her loss. For the loss of a treasured comrade. For a slain warrior of the Cadre. For a broken bond.

Her helmet piped more insistently. She passed a glove over her face. It came away dry.

No tears. No solace. Only the dull ache of loss, and the eternal demands of caste and duty.

She triggered the receiver and amplifier remotely, too tired to reach down and make the physical connection. ‘Speak.’

‘Verity,’ came the smooth voice of her second-in-command, the ever-dependable warrior who had served under her command for the entire Nem’yar campaign. The Gothic code-names they used to communicate had been his idea: there had been too many ambushes for the net not to be compromised. She had approved immediately - masking themselves as a gue’la detachment had a grim irony that she appreciated, beyond the practical benefits. ‘There is a local hunter who wishes to speak to our leader.’ A pause, significant. Verity Two knew where she had gone, and for what purpose. ‘I would not involve you if this was irrelevant.’

She bit back her immediate negative. He was a veteran. His senses were to be trusted. Yet she had no tolerance for the whining of the gue’la tonight, no pity to spend on their miserable lives and woes. No doubt this would be a request for assistance in tracking local animals for food. How the gue’la starved when the Ka’ra Mare woods teemed with life was beyond understanding.

Their weakness sickened her. It churned in her stomach. It clenched her fingers to the trigger of her pulse carbine. It roiled, deep and dark, like bile in her throat.

She swallowed it down, black and burning. She took a breath. Then another.

‘Where?’

‘Atop the eastern palisades. I have not informed the others. The decision may be made without… undue pressures.’

Her mouth creaked a small, fleeting smile. The bond was broken. But it was - it had been - foolish to believe herself alone when the finest warriors of the cadre supported her in battle and these unfamiliar politics both.

‘On my way.’

The helmet was still warm when she secured it. The optic feeds linked up, and the world around her came to false-life, the info-feeds directing her attention to nearby sources of body heat, wind speed and direction, local temperature - which plummeted as she pushed out of the cottage’s creaking, broken door, though the insulated armour kept her own vitals healthy. Fragile crystals of ice were beginning to flurry down from the darkened sky - there were no stars tonight.

Even in the sealed and purified confines of her recon armour, the oily scent of burnt tallow still tickled at her. She pushed it from her mind, striding with purpose towards the crude wooden barricades that bordered the hamlet, the sharpened stakes and few towers the sole defence against the wilder beasts of the forest.

In her determination, in her buried grief - she did not wonder who had lit seven candles in an abandoned house.

**II - UNRAVELLED**

Rugged up in an oiled overcoat and hood, a weathered las-rifle over one shoulder, the hunter was the very picture of a rugged frontiersman. He did not offer his hand to Verity as she came through the rising chill - she would not have taken it in any case. He simply nodded, one professional to another. At his side, a shade taller than the commander, stood a warrior that was in every other way identical to the one who approached.

‘Kaz,’ the hunter said by way of greeting. ‘Appreciate your time. Can see you folks are trail-sore, and I wouldn’t have rousted you if it wasn’t something dire.’

Verity said nothing. The hunter took it as a sign to continue.

‘If it was just the red-wolves howling,’ he said, scratching at his matted grey beard, ‘I’d have put out there myself and did an end to it. Wouldn’t be the first time. Ka’ra Mare, it’s got a nasty side, one we don’t like to spread about - but it’s no more than that. And for the most part, the red-wolves stay well back from the walls, they know better than to sniff around here. Anything in the woods, that’s fair game, but here... never. Not since my granpappy’s time.’

‘We appreciate the warning,’’ replied Verity, flattening the anger from her voice. ‘We will not hunt wildlife for you. If we are accosted, we will defend ourselves and this hamlet as necessary.’

Kaz shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that, it’s not the wolves. Listen, I… I’m the woodsman, the old hand around the Mare, you ken? Not much I don’t know about it, even the Spring.’ He did not look away, even those embarrassment ruddied his cheeks. ‘But this is something new. Not a trail I’ve seen before. Not a natural one, at any rate.’

Emotion could not be read behind the armoured helms of the Pathfinders, but the hunter knew he’d sparked something in the new one - and a caution in the first, who had shifted minutely, protectively, towards his superior.

‘You mean gue’la.’ Verity’s voice was colder than the ice that disintegrated on her armour. ‘Ambushers. Assassins.’

‘Could be. Whatever it is, the red-wolves should have been after it. Been a lean season. But they’re not, ken? They’re running.’ He sniffed, stomped his feet. ‘They don’t run, not when they’re hungry. They’ll fight a cave-dweller when their blood’s hot. I can’t think of what would scare em’ like that.’

‘It may be an alpha predator seeking prey or territory,’ replied Verity’s second, though he sounded unsure even through the voice-filter. ‘Migration patterns. The conflict driving species from their habitats--’

A howl interrupted him. A piercing howl. A frenzied cry, of animal fear. Branches snapped beyond the palisade, under the pounding feet of approaching beasts.

The two T’au were only a fraction slower than the hunter, blinking their targeting feeds to seek body heat at range, scanning wavelengths that would light the Mare’s gloom as though it were a full, bright day. They saw the creatures only as silhouettes - red shadows against the cold dark, blurring with movement as they rushed towards the hamlet. Each was taller than the hunter by a foot, their broad chests and narrow snouts made for the chase and the kill. Ears flat. Predators in motion.

The red-wolves.

Two pulse carbines came up. Safeties dialled off. Helm-sensors trilled to wait for the optimal range to ensure a kill-shot on the oncoming machines of muscle and fur.

The hunter’s las remained shouldered. His hands frantically beat down the carbine barrels. ‘Stop!’ he cried, ‘You’ll kill us! Stop!’

His words were not from a broken mind, pleading for nature not to slay and consume him - they were for the Pathfinders. He had seen something, heard something, and though every instinct the T’au possessed screamed at them to pull the trigger, to volley the beasts before they could gain the hamlet before they were amongst the vulnerable folk that they were in their care -- they relented. The guns dropped a fraction. Fingers slackened off triggers. The tac-feed screamed warnings that were ignored. Range-markers blinked urgently, pulsing the fatal warning that a gunline was about to be overrun--

\--and then they were under the gate, and then they were passed, almost swifter than the eye could follow. Few things so large, so bloody red, should move so fast. Verity braced for them to break off towards the slamming doors, the thin-walled cottages, yet they did not.

The pack - seven in total - came to a halt in the hamlet’s centre, beside the ancient stone well. The red-wolves were breathing hard, their breath steaming white in the air, tongues lolling and chests heaving as they circled each other warily, eyes gleaming and suspicious as they looked this way and that, seeking a threat. Ears twitched for a far-off sound. They huddled against one another, their energy spent.

They could run no more.

And yet they had come to the place of ancestral pain, a place that was only death for their kind and had been so for the centuries that the hamlet had stood in the Mare. They had come to the stick-home, where the small fire-bearers levelled their torches and struck down their kind. And now they, these creatures as large and far more ferocious than a mature geh’an, had fled to the only refuge that remained to them.

The hunter’s eyes were wide with amazement. ‘Never,’ he breathed, ‘Never have I seen this. Never.’

Others were peering through the windows and cracked doors of their homes at the beasts that they had only known from a distance, as fatal shades that stalked the Mare, as bedtime stories told by mothers to overcurious children.

But the red-wolves paid no attention to those around them. They had eyes only for the eastern palisade. More whimpers than growls built low in their throats.

Verity turned to sweep the treeline with her helmet’s sensors. They saw nothing. The readings were stable, cold and dead. There was nothing behind the wolves, nothing forcing them to flight. It was inexplicable. She tried a series of different bands to the same result, blink-snapping orders to the Pathfinder team to gear up and assume perimeters around the hamlet to lay sights on an unknown foe. Squad markers flickered to readiness as each powered up their weaponry: markerlight data streamed into a separate feed as each came online, each collating. Each feed came with a verbal sign-on.

A view off the eastern wall, through swirling snowflakes. ‘Verity Three, eyes on.’

The red-wolves, overwatch from the roof of the chapel. ‘Verity Four, eyes on.’

A low buzz behind the voices. Interference? A sightline across their path of egress. ‘Verity Five, eyes on.’

Another feed came in: the northern approach, a sheer rockface. ‘Verity Six, eyes on.’

A clear view of two Pathfinders and a human in an oilskin overcoat.

From the outside.

From the dead, dark Mare.

_ **'Seven.'** _

**III - UNDONE**

The censer swung like a sickly comet, a green body through the dark, a sure and steady pendulum. It hung from a belt of blue flesh twined through ragged gaps in broken armour, a cord that sagged grossly with every step, every measure, but never broke. The figure that bore it was a giant in ancient armour, pitted and scarred by war and rust, a single broken horn jutting up from the helm. It sang as it walked towards the palisade, unconcerned by the eyes upon it, a creature who would not - could not - be hurried.

At each step, the light snow beneath the giant’s feet blackened and hardened, sprouting fungus and mould, capturing each blessed footfall in a perfect imprint, every feature of the sole meticulously recorded.

Verity could see it happen before her eyes. Yet she could not believe it. The disbelief was something that had been a core of her life, from the Academy to the Pathfinders -- the enemy was ancient and evil and possessed the ability to manipulate matter at times and in unpredictable ways. But there was a science to it. It could be understood. It was not supernatural. It was not sorcerous.

Disbelief dragged her carbine up to aim at something her helmet insisted was not there. Beside her, her second did the same, though the hunter remained frozen, his mouth agape.

Two small red dots painted the giant’s cracked faceplate. Something viscous drooled out from beneath.

‘Cadre,’ Verity said over the net with an icy calm, ‘Volley fire on mark. Shot.’

She pulled the trigger.

A spear of fire connected her weapon to the giant for the briefest of moments. It punched through the ceramite and out the other side, earthing in the ground behind him. After a moment, the squad’s shots came as well, piercing the foe from several directions at once. Steam gushed from wounds, vapourised organs and liquified tissue melting away into the winter air.

The giant took another step.

_ **'One.’** _

Verity blinked.

‘Shot,’ she said and pulled the trigger.

Again the giant was pierced. Again he was pricked by plasma needles, his very being leeched away by superheated projectiles. The pulse carbine was not a heavy weapon, but it served just as well in the field and by concentrated squad fire.

The giant took another step.

_ **'Two.’** _

‘Shot.’

The horn blew away. A microsphere of energy punched through the giant’s head, where an eye may have been, a clear tunnel through which one could look and see the frost form on the exit wound.

Another step.

_ **'Three.’** _

And beside Verity, the hunter clutched at his throat, his face turning black, his swollen tongue protruding as if strangled by an invisible fist. His cheeks swelled. Pus drooled into his beard.

‘Shot.’

The first miss, from Verity Five. It would be the Pathfinder’s first and last.

The giant did not stop.

_ **'Four.’** _

The feed went red, then dead. The squad marker went dark. The audio link remained open: the idiot buzz of swarming insects.

‘Free fire, cadre.’ Verity hoped they did not hear the rising in her voice. She hoped they would ignore the shaking of her hands. But she did not believe that this was anything more than a trick, an illusion, some kind of force-screen or holo-projection that made it appear that the giant -- an arm hanging by sinew and torn muscle, ruptured belly spilling intestines down to trail in the darkened snow -- was injured but alive.

She pulled the trigger. The fire was no longer co-ordinated on her shot: now weapons fire hit the giant in a staccato rhythm, but there were more misses now as the fear began to build, began to gnaw. And as the squad began to die.

_ **'Five.’** _

Beside Verity, her second swore as the corpse of the hunter brushed against him, lashing out with the butt of his carbine to catch the body in the jaw. Bone splintered and it fell away, into the hamlet below. The red-wolves were howling, their cries punctuated by carbine shots. Absently, as she pulled the trigger, she found herself listening to the melody. It was almost hypnotic. The swing of the censer. The howl of the wolves. The hiss of weapons fire.

She pulled the trigger. No response. She glanced down to find her weapon had acquired a patina of grime and corrosion. Before her eyes, the loading mechanism fell away to rot at her feet.

Another squad marker went dead. The buzz grew louder. Another marker. Louder.

The noise resonated within her. It coiled around the misery she had pushed down, lifted it into the light to examine. It did not feel like an invasion. It felt like a careful touch, a consideration, something to be expected of a bond-mate--

Two squad markers remained.

Then one.

She was vaguely aware of her second shaking her, of watching his helmet dissolve like mist around the white of his head. She felt herself wondering, shouldn’t it be blue? She had seen him without it before, and it had been blue then, hadn’t it? She reached out to touch it.

It crumbled beneath her fingers. Shards of skull fell away from her hand.

But she could not quite believe it.

_ **'Six.’** _

The red-wolves were running, now. Their flight was enjoined by the people of the hamlet. Doors banged open, babes were clutched and swaddled, lanterns and torches and all they could carry as the gue’la fled their homes. They would not get far before the two turned on each other. She knew, oh, she knew, there would be plenty of time to catch them up.

She stumbled down the palisade steps. One foot in front of the other, as she had seen someone - something? - do so long ago. It had not stopped. Nor should she.

It waited outside the gate, patiently. It was always patient. And kind. And generous. It had come to share a gift, hadn’t it? Hadn’t she seen that?

Hadn't she lit the candles?

_**'Seven,’**_ said the giant, but his voice was no longer a roar but a gentle, fatherly tone, as one would use educating a wayward child. _**'I have heard that you lost something precious, Shas’Ul Ksa’s’mai Var’kel. I could hear you weeping, and I could not bear the thought. So I have come to return it to you.'**_

Out from behind the giant’s cooling bulk came a slender figure, unsure at first, her face downcast. When she looked up-- oh.

Oh!

Those eyes!

Those pearlescent eyes set in that pocked skin. The flesh of the cheek torn away exposing the mandibles. The ragged undershirt that did nothing to hide the abuse the body had suffered, the bruises, the dried blood, the bones that thrust through the skin, but oh, those eyes.

Verity raised her arms to embrace her bond-mate.

And the tears came at last.


End file.
